If you come back tomorrow,

I’ll regret the way I’ve spent

my days stuck in the dryer,

shrinking, dyed red, like

the vintage T-shirts I leave

at the bottom of the basket

each laundry day that passes.

A sift of flaked leaves

and fallen moss—dirt

cooled between fingers,

crisp and brown, netted

grass itch for an earth:

Each year, a memory

Of tourists makes their way

Below the thermocline.

Sometimes you are carried by the wreckage

of your own ship—as helpless to direct this

flotsam as you were when it was floorboards

that lurched beneath disquiet cries of shorebirds.